Pellet Stoves Place

Archive for the ‘Advantages and Benefits’ Category

Wood is one of the Earth’s resources that has been in use by man the longest. This renewable resource is available in most parts of the world at little or no cost, and in most areas can be delivered already chopped and split, and stacked right at your home site.

If you don’t have convenient access to firewood, you can always buy pressed-wood logs at grocery and improvement stores. Of course, quality across pressed-wood log brands vary greatly so experiment with may different brands until you find the one that works best for you.

People the world over have used wood stoves for cooking and heating for century, for a simple reason. When the power goes out, you aren’t left freezing, in the dark. Wood stove have no moving, electrical parts, so they can continue to provide heat for your family. Wood can be stockpiled cheaply and easily to insure continued heating of your home, even if the power goes out. A fantastic choice for zone heating applications, wood stoves generally have long service life, often operating efficiently for 20 years or more. Many states have stringent air quality standards that most modern wood stoves can meet or even exceed.

With their clean burning technology, many stoves come equipped with an “airwash” system that is able to keep the stove glass clean. Newer stoves are so efficient that they can get up to 12 hours of burn time. Relatively easy to maintain, wood burning stoves are a great way to enjoy the ambience of fire in your home without a lot of work. It is recommend that you use your stove at least an hour a day at a high temperature setting to help reduce ash buildup and deposits on the glass and in the chimney. Wood stoves come in a large variety of sizes, so you are sure to find the right size for your needs.

Too large a stove in a smaller home can actually produce so much heat as to make your home uncomfortable. Wood stoves are not controlled by thermostat, so you cannot adjust the temperature as easily as with a gas or pellet stove. A ceiling fan in conjunction with a smaller stove is a good combination to thoroughly disperse the heat throughout your home.

Where operating pellet stoves is concerned, low energy costs instead of efficiency has often been the goal. Using alternating current, most pellet stoves demand 100 watts or more of power for operation.

Advances in pellet stove technology by the Thelin Company, located in Grass Valley, California have led to the development of the “Pellex” brand of stoves that are able to be operated on either standard A.C. current, or in an emergency situation, a 12 volt lead-acid battery. When run on a battery, the “Pellex” stove can provide up to four hours of heat. By being designed to operate efficiently with wither alternating or direct current, the “Pellex: stove is much more energy efficient than standard pellet stoves, using 28 watts as opposed to 100.

The “Pellex” stove employs two separate air circuits. Air enters the combustion area of the stove through a pipe entering the rear of the stove, below the combustion chamber. The air flows through the burn pot where the pellets are, up through the combustion chamber, and back down through two rectangle shaped passages to a forced air fan. The waste gas is forced through an exhaust pipe at the rear of the stove.

On the bottom of the stove is a propeller fan that pulls air from the outside room into the stove.  A small amount of this room air is used to cool the electronics area of the stove, while the remainder of the air passes up into either two pairs of inch diameter tubes, or through a space located between the pellet bin and the combustion chamber. At this stage, the air flows over the top of the combustion chamber and out of the front of the stove.

Pellet stoves are convenient and easy to use due to their automated feed hopper system. Your pellet stove will provide you with a radiant and penetrating convection heat automatically. When using your pellet stove, all you need to do is load the hopper with a measured supply of pellets.

The automatic feed system delivers the fuel directly into the combustion chamber of the stove, while air is forced into the chamber, creating an incredibly efficient, and clean burning of the fuel. Since many pellet stoves feature an automatic ignition system, the convenience of these appliances is even greater.

Low cost, low moisture content and ease of use and transport are just a few of the great benefits of using biomass fuels. Pellet fuel is easy to transport and feed into burning systems, making it the most ideal bio fuel available for small-scale use. But how are wood pellets different from regular firewood?

Wood pellets are uniform, unlike raw firewood. Wood pellets are made by drying and pressing wood shavings and sawdust. Thus, wood pellets have a much lower moisture content than raw wood. Moisture in unprocessed materials used for fuel are a drawback as the increased mass leads to inefficiency in transport and higher costs. Also, moisture in wood used for fuel can cause deterioration of the wood through rotting and degeneration while being handled and stored.

Varying amounts of moisture in raw biomass results in lower efficiency because of uneven combustion and higher emissions. Biomass that has been made into pellets offer higher energy density because pellets are made of biomass that has been dehydrated and then compressed. Drying and compressing biomass also leads to better combustion in pellets. Wood pellets are also more convenient to store and transport than raw wood. The savings achieved when storing and transporting energy dense wood pellets offset the cost of processing raw biomass into pellets. Pellets also offer ease of use and convenience unparalleled by raw biomass fuels.

Unlike unprocessed biomass, pellets come ready to be fed directly into burners. No splitting or other preparation is needed. However, this convenience is reflected in the cost; pellets do cost more than raw fuels. In considering the advantages and disadvantages of pellet fuels, it is also important to note that some of the drawbacks of using pellets instead of oil are the added need of larger storage facilities, removal of ashes as well as increased supervision and control of pellet quality.

An important advantage of wood pellet fuel over fossil fuels is the impact of wood pellet fuel upon the environment. Wood pellet fuel is a renewable resource, unlike fossil fuels. Furthermore, wood pellet fuel use does not contribute to the greenhouse effect. Five cubic meters of oil releases 13.8 tons of carbon dioxide into the environment. Clearly, replacing oil usage with bio fuels would significantly decrease carbon dioxide emissions.

It may be useful to impose a tax upon carbon dioxide emission to help encourage the use of alternative fuels such as wood pellets that do not emit carbon dioxide. However, the impact upon the environment should electricity use be replaced by wood pellets is unknown as this would depend upon the manner in which electricity is being produced. The cheaper price of wood pellet fuel compared to electricity or petroleum oil as well as its more stable price range is another advantage of wood pellet fuel over fossil fuels. While oil and electricity prices continue to climb, wood pellet prices are expected to remain steady.

Supplies of wood pellets are available both domestically and overseas; there are many options for importing wood pellets and other bio fuels. However, an added benefit of producing pellets at home rather than abroad would be the creation of many new employment opportunities here in this country.